Monday, June 30, 2014

As I posted several years ago, the Arabs of Halhoul suffered from British Army atrocities when residents were left out in a cage in the sun with no water to die. In a scholarly article I there quoted, we learn that

Up to fifteen men died in Halhul, mostly elderly Palestinians (the youngest victim was thirty-five, the oldest seventy-five) who died after being left out in the sun for several days in a caged enclosure with insufficient water. Halhul villagers also claim that soldiers shot a local man at a well during the same operation—in fact, it seems that soldiers beat the victim and then left him to drown in the well.

Jews were also victims of British acts of illicit/extralegal violence. On one occasion, 5 Jewish civilians, walking on sidewalks, were shot dead in an indiscrimate act of reprisal.Draw your own conclusions.^

Sunday, June 29, 2014

There'll be no visits during afternoon hours for the length of Ramadan month to the Temple Mount for non-Muslims:

While the spelling there is correct, the Hebrew actually reads in English translation:

Dear Visitor,

From today until July 27, 2014,

the Temple Mount will be closed

to visitors between the hours

of 13:30 to 14:30

due to Ramadan.

And if you go here, and if you use Google Translate, you can find out that a good few people are really angry that the Palestinian Authority's Minister for Waqf Affairs, Mahmoud Dabash, was attacked, yelled at and pushed into hiding for his safety on Friday night while visiting the Temple Mount.. This, all the while "settlers are storming Al-Aqsa".

Saturday, June 28, 2014

The Palestinians who were forced out of their homes in 1948 were not regarded by Israel as refugees. That would have implied that Palestine was their country, to which they would have the right to return. This was not the way the Israeli authorities saw it

Since most of those Arabs that found themselves not in their homes as a result of an aggressive war launched by the Arabs of Mandate Palestine which intended to eradicate the Jews there and prevent a UN decision to establish a Jewish state were actually still in the territory of the former Palestine Mandate, they were less refugees than internally displaced persons. In fact he does mention them but gets it wrong:

the ‘present absentees’ and ‘internal infiltrators’: Palestinians who never left Palestine but who had left their villages temporarily to stay in another part of Palestine.

Judea and Samaria and even Transjordan are parts of the Palestine Mandate.And let us not forget the several Jewish refugees that were cared for by UNRWA until 1952.Shehadeh notes, too:

Arab Jews who were being absorbed into the new country at the same time were not called refugees either. They came through maabarot (transits), as though by reaching Israel they were passing through the gates of heaven; in Hebrew they were said to be ‘making aliya’, ‘ascending’. Nor were they seen as mere ‘immigrants’: they were returning home after two thousand years of longing.

Continuing to read his 'history' we see this:

By 1987 the number of mukharebeen [wasmukharebeen is what you call a naughty child in Arabic – anta mukhareb, ‘you are a spoiler.’] had greatly increased in the Occupied Territories. Most of us were spoilers. We used every non-violent method and some violent ones to show that we’d had enough of occupation

Arab terror, violence, mainly directed at civilian targets, was started immediately and in fact, had restarted with the founding of the PLO in 1964. Its charter that year defines Zionism so:

Article 19: Zionism is a colonialist movement in its inception, aggressive and expansionist in its goal, racist in its configurations, and fascist in its means and aims. Israel, in its capacity as the spearhead of this destructive movement and as the pillar of colonialism, is a permanent source of tension and turmoil in the Middle East...

and therefore,

Article 16: The liberation of Palestine, from an international viewpoint, is a defensive act necessitated by the demands of self-defense

They just switch things around.How to achieve 'liberation'? By an

...upbringing of the Palestinian individual in an Arab and revolutionary fashion, the undertaking of all means of forging consciousness and training the Palestinians, in order to acquaint him profoundly spiritually and materially with his land, and prepare him for the conflict and armed struggle

That's in Article 7, even in the 1968 version.And it's important to highlight that in Article 24 of the 1964 original version, the PLO

...does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, in the Gaza Strip or the Himmah area.

- It was the non-violent uprising of 1987, waged inside the Occupied Territories, that forced Israel to the negotiating table.- the role those of us living under Israeli rule had played in the civil struggle- Israeli laws were imported into the Occupied Territories and applied exclusively to the settlers. There had to be separate and unequal development – apartheid – if the Jewish settlements were to flourish.- After 47 years of Israeli rule Jerusalem is organised, run and designed for the sole benefit of Israeli residents, particularly settlers in and around Arab East Jerusalem, with a shrinking ghetto assigned to disenfranchised Palestinian residents.- The wish to entrench its virtual acquisition of a state sometimes manifests itself in physical terms: for example, the construction in Ramallah of a million-dollar presidential palace for visiting dignitaries who come to pay homage to the putative head of a state yet to be born.- What can be done to end this conflict? I would argue for a two-pronged approach. Israel must be made to realise that the failure to apply international law will not last for ever and that occupation will begin to exact an economic price; but it also needs to see the benefits it can derive from making peace.

And then, at the end, he writes:

In 1993...before the Oslo deal was signed, young Palestinians were saying that they would fight Israel to the last day of their lives. But once the deal was signed and began to offer a glimmer of hope the tone changed. You heard them say: Yikhribbeit el hjar, ‘to hell with stone-throwing’. Reminded of their earlier position they said in their defence that they wanted a better future and a chance to live in peace with the Israelis. Prominent among those who went through this transformation and put their faith in the peace process was the Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, in his early thirties at the time, who is now serving several life sentences for allegedly leading attacks against Israel.

"Alleged"? In open court, after he was arrested by Israel Defense Forces in 2002 in Ramallah, he was tried and convicted on charges of murder, stemming from attacks carried out by the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and sentenced to five life sentences. Marwan Barghouti refused to present a defense to the charges brought against him, maintaining throughout that the trial was illegal and illegitimate.

Friday, June 27, 2014

American Consul General Visits Tulkarem, Meets with Governor, Mayor, and Visits US Funded ProjectsDuring a June 23 visit to Tulkarem, American Consul General Michael Ratney met with Governor Dr. Abdullah Kmeil and Mayor Iyad Jallad, toured the local muqata’a, and visited the al-Mentar museum and a USAID-funded strawberry farm.

Palestinian Journalism Students Use Training on Environmental Issues to Help Their CommunitiesWith a grant provided by the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem, more than 60 young Palestinians studying journalism and communications at universities in Ramallah, Hebron, Jerusalem and Nablus received intensive training on environmental awareness and outreach conducted by the Palestinian Center for Environment (CEP).

U.S. Consul General Visits the Nablus-Beit Iba-Deir Sharaf Road - the Largest U.S. Investment in a Single Road Project in the West Bank

a video of Palestinian kids having fun at the American Consulate General’s booth at the Birzeit Heritage Week, June 23-27, 2014a short video of young Palestinian handicapped athletes playing basketball as part of a U.S. Consulate General sponsored sports programthe graduation of 100 Palestinian teacher trainees after taking a 4-days training with Dr. Leslie Opp-Beckman. The top 12 were selected to take the Professional Certificate in English Language Teaching.

There are independent initiatives for peace education. There are others. And more. These seem to mix things up but I am not that sure that Arabs from the Pal. Authroity participate with Jews who reside nearvy to them, and doubt it.Peace will not be achieved if one side doesn't know there is another side.^

Thursday, June 26, 2014

One of the issues that was discussed today with The Forwards's editor Jane Eisner was whether the two-state solution is still a possibility. Dani Dayan, with an approving nod from me,

basically said 'no'.I returned from the trip to Psagot Winery at Migron, Ofra, Shiloh, Esh Kodesh and Ariel University and this was in my box:

ReportedA clear majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip oppose a two-state solution to end their struggle with Israel, according to a poll released o Wednesday.Sixty percent of those polled, including 55% in the West Bank and 68% in Gaza, reject permanently accepting Israel’s existence and instead suggest their leaders “work toward reclaiming all of historic Palestine, from the river to the sea.”

Two-thirds of those polled support continued “resistance” against the Jewish state. Consequentially, those who say they support a two-state solution view such a move as “part of a ‘program of stages’ to liberate all of historic Palestine later.”

The survey, conducted throughout the Palestinian territories, was commissioned by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and was conducted by a leading Palestinian pollster from June 15 to June 17.

The Washington Institute characterized the poll’s results as a sudden, hardline shift within the Palestinian community. It also presented the pragmatism revealed in the minutia of the survey: 80% of Palestinians would “definitely” or “probably” be in favor of greater job opportunities in Israel, and 70% of Gazans strongly favor Hamas maintaining its cease-fire with the IDF – despite generally favoring resistance.

Oops.And something else.

Eisner published an article expressing more than empathy with official Israel position on the anti-Semitism in the Presbyterian:-

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

One of the "Wicked Witches of the Waqf", the female Islamists who scream and shout and push and attempt to creat provocations that will, they hope, lead to violence, so that Jews can be barred from visiting the Temple Mount.

I can therefore only foresee a worsening climate – not a one-time disaster (say, an avalanche following the killing of a Jew while performing a prayer in the Noble Sanctuary, on what Israelis call the Temple Mount in Jerusalem) that can once and for all be put behind, by whichever side, but an increasingly ugly living climate in which only those who can acclimatize and be ugly themselves can survive.

And we onced shared a shaver while preparing for a debate on Channel One TV some 30 years ago.By the way, why should a Jew be killed for praying?Are all Muslims fanatic and intolerant?Are all "Palestinians" deniers of Jewish history and the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount?___________DG just reminded me:

so says Sari Nusseibeh who resigned as president of Al Quds University after pressure from Hamas

Abductions in Palestine: The disappearance of three Israeli boys believed to have been kidnapped while they were hitchhiking in the West Bank has garnered international attention. In the winter of 1944-45, several Jews were kidnapped in British Mandate Palestine. In one incident the kidnappers disguised themselves as British policemen. After three kidnappings took place in two days in late January 1945 -- one “in broad daylight on a busy Jerusalem street” -- JTA calculated that about a dozen people had been “abducted within recent weeks” in Palestine.

If you click on, you're sent here:

More Kidnappings in Palestine; Victim Snatched on Jerusalem StreetFebruary 1, 1945Jerusalem (Jan. 31)Three more kidnappings took place in Palestine during the past two days bringing to about a dozen the number of persons abducted within recent weeks.An unknown man was seized in broad daylight on a busy Jerusalem street today, while a taxi-driver, Jacob Roth, was kidnapped in Nathanya yesterday and a young member of the Betar football team, Meir Samuelov, was abducted yesterday in Petach Tikvah.

That, of course, is referring to incidents of the infamous "Saison" operation of the Palmah and Hagana against mainly the Irgun dissidents. Some were beaten and tortured by the representatives of the "official Yishuv" institutions, others were interrogated and incarcerated and others handed over to the British CID. Some where kicked out of schools.

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

is really upset.It seems that a Norwegian state-owned pension fund has, yes, invested in an Israeli supermarket chain active in the "occupied West Bank", aka Judea and Samaria, Rami Levy Chain Stores (caveat, my wife is an employee at its Yafiz branch at Sha'ar Binyamin).Adri, "a human rights advocate based in Switzerland", And a BDSer who is "passionate about justice and equal rights for all" contacted the Norwegian Council of Ethics, which advises the fund, and she asked

how it could justify the investment when it issued a policy statement in 2013 acknowledging that Israel’s settlements violate international law.

What happened next?

Aslak Skancke, a staff member with the council, replied that its policy on the illegality of Israel’s settlements in the West Bank is “about construction.”“It does not exclude other activities,” he said.

Can you hear me laughing?Adri (Jewish? Israeli?) thinks that there is "an onus on Norway to shun the company". Why?She quotes one Karin Arts, a professor of international law and development with the International Institute of Social Studies inThe Hague, who thinks that the 2004 ICC ruling contains "an obligation related directly to assisting the wall" which then "could be interpreted as requiring governments to divest from companies benefiting from the wider occupation'.Arts firmly insists that "Investments [in Israeli banks and companies doing business in the occupied territories] violate laws". To her, what must be upmost is to prevent the "rewarding the profiteers of occupation". I presume benefitting local Arabs is to be preventing too.^

Monday, June 23, 2014

At the official Knesset site, you can find the detailed summary of its Interior Committee's session today regarding the situation on the Temple Mount which I attended:

Presenting the summary of the deputy committee on the matter of Jewish immigration [sic] to the Temple Mount b) The Ministry of Justice's opinion on racism between Jews and Arabs on the Temple Mount

Committee Chair, MK Miri Regev, who raises her voice just a bit too much and could assist the deliberations by shortening her interjections, has been doing wonderful work in highlighting the issues of weak police responses to Islamist violence, physical and verbal.

The police even complained that she suggest they lacked courage (by which she meant not physical courage but the type need to control the situation before they need to roll into the precincts and put down riots

I did not get a chance to offer an opinion - Yehudah Glick did - but I would have asked if they want to maintain the status quo and are so intent upon defending their approach, then why have they permitted a new custom of study groups to plant themselves along the route the Jews take to walk around the Mount compound? Why do they allow taunting chants? The approaching up close by Muslims to terrify and interfere with Jews exercising their right of access (we are not referring to prayer which is prohibited)? This is an infraction of the status quo but the police ignore it and no one pressed them on it.A Hebrew-language report.^

If Jews were the conquered ones...There would be no occupation, because there would no longer be two peoples in this land.

Haaretz columnist Sayed Kashua asks Israeli Jews to imagine a situation in which they were the weak and conquered party...Kashua apparently believes that Israeli Jews’ apathy to Palestinian suffering stems from the fact that they never ask themselves what would happen if the roles were reversed. But I think just the opposite is true: This apathy is to a great extent the result of dwelling on this question too much. Because the answer the Jewish public gives itself when it imagines a military defeat and Arab conquest is that in such a case there will no longer be two peoples in this land....only a few have any illusions regarding what an Arab occupation would be like......And when an Israeli Jew today ponders the internal disputes raging in the surrounding Arab world – and face it, there is no Israeli citizen, Jew or Arab, who doesn’t do this – there is no reason for him to be optimistic....when a Jewish Israeli remembers what the Hamas takeover of Gaza looked like – even though in regional terms it was exemplary in its moderation – there’s no reason for optimism, either.

He is not a rightist:

None of this in any way contravenes the need to end the occupation and divide the land between the two peoples. That’s the just and proper thing to do, and is in Israel’s ultimate interest. Because if Israel ends up defeated in this conflict, it’s safe to assume that it won’t be a military defeat, but a diplomatic defeat that will result in the establishment of one state between the river and the sea. Such a state won’t be Israel. What’s ironic is that those who seek to impose this defeat on Israel call themselves the “national camp.”

Of course, I dispute that conclusion but for sure there will still be Arabs residing there.Unlike what the Arabs have planned for us.And we are not either Shunni nor Shi'a. ^

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Israeli killed, 5 injured in Golan Heights blastPublished today (updated) 22/06/2014 14:24BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A 15-year-old was killed and at least five others seriously injured when a blast hit a vehicle traveling in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday morning.The blast, which marks the first time an Israeli has been killed in the Golan Heights since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution and civil war more than three years ago, occurred near the Israeli settlement of Tel Hazeka near the ceasefire line with Syria.

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- A teenage Israeli settler was killed and at least five others seriously injured when a blast hit a vehicle traveling in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday morning.The blast, which marks the first time an Israeli has been killed in the Golan Heights since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution and civil war more than three years ago, occurred near the Israeli settlement of Tel Hazeka near the ceasefire line with Syria.The blast hit a vehicle belonging to a "civilian" employed by the Israeli army to reinforce the border fence, according to Israeli news site Ynet.

If you missed it, the term "settler" is now missing as is the reference to a "civilian" (as if the victim was really a soldier in disguise.The dead person is Mohammed Karaka

A 13-year-old boy [from Arabeh]...The explosion hit a car belonging to a Defense Ministry employee contracted to reinforce the border fence in the area, killing his son who was in the car at the time. The worker sustained serious wounds, and three other civilians were also hurt.

Being Arab changes everything except for the fact that Syrian-based terrorists killed a minor.^

Q. ...when you announced that the peace process, the talks, would be ongoing, Hamas came out and said they pledged more violence. Based on your meetings...do you think he is capable or willing to stop the violence coming from Hamas?

A. ...I think what he has to do is exert 100 percent effort to try to stop the violence. It's very hard to guarantee 100 percent results, but we expect 100 percent effort. I have say that, since I was there, we have seen some steps forward in his work to try to limit terrorism and work at the infrastructure of Hamas. There have been some positive steps. Those have been recognized by Israel.

Q. Yet recently, at a unity rally, he was seen embracing the leader of Hamas. How can, on one hand, he say he's looking for serious peace and, on the other hand, embrace the leader of the organization that has vowed to end the peace process.

A. Well, that was then, and I spoke to him about that. I think, since that time, he has taken some steps. He has to take more steps, because it's very hard to expect anybody to exist -- the Israelis, for instance -- to live under the threat of terrorism. Something has to be done in order to stop the violence, and we have pressed...to do that.

MR. LAUER: As you know, when you announced that the peace process, the talks, would be ongoing, Hamas came out and said they pledged more violence. Based on your meetings with Yasser Arafat, do you think he is capable or willing to stop the violence coming from Hamas?

SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: I think what he has to do is exert 100 percent effort to try to stop the violence. It's very hard to guarantee 100 percent results, but we expect 100 percent effort. I have say that, since I was there, we have seen some steps forward in his work to try to limit terrorism and work at the infrastructure of Hamas. There have been some positive steps. Those have been recognized by Israel.

MR. LAUER: Yet recently, at a unity rally, he was seen embracing the leaderof Hamas. How can, on one hand, he say he's looking for serious peace and, on the other hand, embrace the leader of the organization that has vowed to end the peace process.

SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: Well, that was then, and I spoke to him about that. I think, since that time, he has taken some steps. He has to take more steps, because it's very hard to expect anybody to exist -- the Israelis, for instance -- to live under the threat of terrorism. Something has to be done in order to stop the violence, and we have pressed Arafat to do that.

Can someone remind them that a Hamas-Fatah Unity government was tried --- and failed?^

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Only Israel is permitted. Only Israel is permitted to carry out illegal, immoral operations. Only it is permitted to be sanctimonious, to be shocked and to shout from the rooftops when others do the same thing to Israel. Only Israel is permitted to take hostages.

Unfortunately, Gideon Levy is not the only Jew who bashes Israel.Unfortunately, Gideon Levy is not the only Jew who hates other Jews for being Zionists.Unfortunately, Gideon Levy is not the only Jew who maligns patriotic and pioneering Jews who are fulfilling the most basic of Zionist values.Unfortunately, Gideon Levy is not the only Jew who loves Israel's enemies so much that he will twist, misrepresent and misconstrue. And lie, too.Dear readers, you are welcome to add your thoughts in the comments sections.^

The hunt continues for the missing Israeli teenagers. The roundup of Palestinians also continues. More than 150 Palestinians have already been taken by Israel’s military.Have they, too, been kidnapped?Interesting that the Israelis taken were on their way back from settlements where they study at yeshivas. I haven’t had a chance to look at the various course catalogs but I assume the yeshivas don’t specialize in interfaith dialogue. I doubt these yeshivas have majors in the Abrahamic faith traditions or cutting-edge programs in interfaith relations.Yeshivas in the West Bank aren’t into Martin Buber.The religion of the occupiers is always an imperialist one. Can it be any different for Judaism when its practitioners occupy another people?The West Bank, and especially Hebron, is once again cordoned off and invaded by the Israeli military. In the situation of occupation,Jews traveling into and out of the West Bank are committing political acts.This doesn’t mean that kidnapping is the civilized way of registering grievances. However, since the war against Palestinians is so devastating and ongoing, the weapons used by the weak cannot be dictated by the powerful.Like suicide bombing, kidnapping is the weapon of the weak. One doesn’t have to condone such actions to understand this reality.Israel isn’t a civilized occupier. In the way it acts toward Palestinians, Israel isn’t civilized at all.Israel kidnaps Palestinians on a regular basis – including Palestinian government officials. For Israel, it is exercising a self-evident right. To dominate another people?

Sometimes you need to know so that you can remind yourself why you are what you are --- and why you aren't like him.And he's a professor.________________UPDATEI was sent this by Petra and since this issue is quite important, I include it here:

On Ellis:http://warped-mirror.com/2012/12/17/mondoweiss-on-court-jew-elie-wiesel-updated/+ this review (which is a bit hard to read because the author mockingly imitates the language of the screed he reviews)http://www.fathomjournal.org/reviews-culture/the-philosophy-behind-bds/The relevant paragraphs on Ellis:For, make no mistake, this is not about mere fancy philosophical footwork for its own sake. It is the concrete and physical destruction of actually-existing Zionism’s real product, Israel, defined as a Jewish and democratic state – and not only the mental game of ‘Deconstruction’, or any other sort of merely academic exercise involving the ‘discursive construct’ of an imaginary Zionism, taken as some kind of ‘text’ to be worried over – toward which this work of post-left post-critical theory relentlessly labours. As the editors candidly announce,‘Far from purely academic exercises, [such brave intellectual forays as these] are practical and political interventions, responding to the singular demands of justice’ [emphasis added; xii].Not only that (!) but, going further in this same vein, Marc H. Ellis, in his essay, ‘The Prophetic Instability of Zionism’, unflinchingly contemplates some of the uglier practicalities associated with this particular vision of ‘justice’ – when that word has been reduced to a synonym for wiping a recognised, prosperous, free and liberal-democratic nation-state from the map. Candidly acknowledging that the short-term consequences of such an eliminationist programme might not look too pretty, Ellis grits his teeth (or grins?) and tells us that painful necessities must be endured resolutely:

June 18, 2014, TORONTO ― Efforts by Canada’s
Office of Religious Freedom to combat religious intolerance must be refocused
on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, according to B’nai Brith Canada. After recently
visiting the site, Canadian Minister of State for Multiculturalism Tim Uppal [a Punjabi Sikh] expressed his belief that all visitors should be given an opportunity to
explore the area and learn about its history and religious significance.

“Jews must not be
barred from visiting or praying at their Holiest site and the location of
both the First and Second Temples,” said Frank Dimant, CEO, B’nai Brith
Canada. “Canada’s view is that freedom of religion ― including the ability to
worship in peace and security ― is a universal human right. As such we look
to the Office of Religious Freedom and Dr. Bennett to reinforce Minister
Uppal’s message that the Temple Mount should be open to all individuals,
regardless of their faith.”

B’nai Brith Canada has been active in Canada since 1875 as the
Jewish community’s foremost human rights agency.

It examines the centrality of the land of Israel to Jewish identity from antiquity to modern day..and shines the light on a growing campaign to erase the Jewish historical connection to the land of Israel...filmmaker Gloria Greenfield engages leading experts in history, archaeology, international law, media, political science and philosophy

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon nominated Zeid earlier this month to replace Navi Pillay, a South African jurist who in 2012 was given an abbreviated second term of only two years. Zeid, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Cambridge University, has previously served as Jordan’s ambassador to the United States and Mexico. He was also a political affairs officer in UNPROFOR, the UN peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia during the Balkan conflict....

...Headquartered in Geneva, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is mandated to promote and protect the enjoyment and full realization, by all people, of all rights established in the UN Charter and in international human rights laws and treaties.The mandate includes preventing human rights violations, securing respect for all human rights, promoting international cooperation to protect human rights, coordinating related activities throughout the UN, and strengthening and streamlining the UN system in the field of human rights. In addition to its mandated responsibilities, the Office leads efforts to integrate a human rights approach within all work carried out by UN agencies.

And

Meanwhile...Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh...said that the country has sent letters to the UN Security Council members, the UN secretary- general, and the EU, informing them about Israeli actions at the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount.

Furthermore,

Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh

and UN Middle East Peace Envoy Robert Serry on Tuesday discussed challenges and obstacles facing the peace process...Judeh reaffirmed Jordan’s position in support of safeguarding Palestinians’ legitimate rights and establishing an independent Palestinian state. He said other regional events should not lead to losing focus on the central issue, which is the Palestinian cause.

Judeh urged all influential parties to work toward ensuring the resumption of serious negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, adding that unless this is achieved, Israel will continue its unilateral actions in the occupied Palestinian lands including settlement construction, and violations against Jerusalem and will continue attempts to change the Arab and Islamic identity of the holy city. The minister said Jordan will not spare any effort to shoulder its responsibilities towards the Islamic and Christian holy sites in the occupied city based on the Hashemite custodianship of the holy places in the city.

Wait! What "Israeli actions"?The "Palestinian cause"?"Islamic and Christian holy sites in the occupied city"?Don't we Jews have human rights?What was I thinking?^

Whereas the Government of the United States and the Government of His Britannic Majesty desire to reach a definite understanding with respect to the rights of the two Governments and their respective nationals in Palestine; The President of the United States of America and His Britannic Majesty have decided to conclude a convention to this effect...:

Article 1
Subject to the provisions of the present convention the United States consents to the administration of Palestine by His Britannic Majesty, pursuant to the mandate recited above.
Article 2
The United States and its nationals shall have and enjoy all the rights and benefits secured under the terms of the mandate to members of the League of Nations and their nationals, notwithstanding the fact that the United States is not a member of the League of Nations.
Article 3
Vested American property rights in the mandated territory shall be respected and in no way impaired.
...Article 5
Subject to the provisions of any local laws for the maintenance of public order and public morals, the nationals of the United States will be permitted freely to establish and maintain educational, philanthropic and religious institutions and the mandated territory, to receive voluntary applicants to teach in the English language.
...Article 7
Nothing contained in the present convention shall be affected by any modification which may be made in terms of the mandate, as recited above, unless such modification shall have been assented to by the United States.
...In witness whereof, the undersigned have signed the present convention, and have thereunto affixed their seals.
Done in duplicate at London, this 3rd day of December, 1924.

The spirit of that document --- with Israel's establishment the convention lost legal standing --- should be applicable no less than any humanitarian right the Arabs demand for themselves in Judea and Samaria (and Gaza). *You're an American? Demand full protection of your rights in that geographical area.Freely establish and maintain!Vest your property rights!We are no second-class citizens.____________*UPDATESee p. 205

JERUSALEMThe bodies of three Jewish youths kidnaped by an Arab band in 1938 were discovered today in a pit near the Arab village of Zila, in the Jenin sub-district. The youths were David Auerbach, 13; Itzhak Krupik, 18, and Jacob Zvang, 24. They were kidnaped on July 23, 1938, from the Jewish colony of Givath Ada. Identification was made through their clothes.

Arab terrorist kidnappings have nothing to do with "settlements" or "tremping".^

Yisrael Medad

This portrayal - "Route 60, a highway that runs through the West Bank. The road was rerouted in 1990 to add bypasses that allow Jewish settlers to travel the West Bank without having to go through Palestinian towns." - is a bit wrong. Highway 60 was rerouted only after the Oslo Accords in 1993 and the reason was two-fold: as Ramallah and Shchem/Nablus were to be surrendered to the Palestinian Authority, the road had to be rerouted. In addition, a second reason was to minimize the injuries and danger to Jewish vehicular travel due to rock-throwing and firebomb tossing, Unfortunately, by awarding Fatah terrorists rigles only ratched up the dangers and many Jews were shot and killed on that road including drive-by shootings from cars driven by Arabs which is odd given the claim that the road is an "apartheid road". Today, half the traffic carries Pal. Authority license plates

About Me

American born, my wife and I moved to Israel in 1970. We have lived at Shiloh together with our family since 1981. I was in the Betar youth movement in the US and UK. I have worked as a political aide to Members of Knesset and a Minister during 1981-1994, lectured at the Academy for National Studies 1977-1994, was director of Israel's Media Watch 1995-2000 and currently, I work at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem. I was a guest media columnist on media affairs for The Jerusalem Post, op-ed contributor to various journals and for six years had a weekly media show on Arutz 7 radio. I serve as an unofficial spokesperson for the Jewish Communities in Judea & Samaria.